Privacy Policy

This site is operated by The Platonist Wine Company (Pty) Ltd (“the house”, “we”, “us”), a South African company based in the Western Cape, South Africa. We are the “responsible party” under South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) and, where the GDPR applies to visitors from the European Union, the “controller” of your personal information.

Questions, requests and complaints: info@platonist.wine. We answer our own mail.

We collect only what the work requires:

• Accounts (members and trade). Name, email address, password (stored only as a salted cryptographic hash; we cannot read it), country, account type, and for trade accounts a business name. Used to operate your account, review your application and offer allocations. Legal basis: performance of a contract, and our legitimate interest in running an allocation list.
• Allocation requests. The wines, quantities and notes you submit, and the price at the time. Used to confirm and invoice your allocation. Legal basis: performance of a contract.
• Trade letters and seat requests. The details you send us (business, contact, market, message; or name, email and motivation for a symposium seat). Used solely to reply and, where relevant, to arrange the table. Legal basis: steps prior to a contract, at your request.
• The Letter.Your email address and where on the site you left it. Used to write to you about releases, allocations and symposia: a few letters a year, nothing more. Legal basis: consent, withdrawable at any time by replying “unsubscribe” or writing to us.
• Age confirmation. Your answer to the age prompt is stored on your own device only. It never reaches our servers.

We do not collect payment card details; there is no online payment on this site. We do not buy, sell or trade personal information.

We use a single, strictly necessary cookie: a session cookie that keeps you signed in to your account. It is httpOnly, expires after 30 days, and carries no tracking. Two small values (the age prompt and the opening animation) are kept in your browser’s own storage and are never transmitted to us.

We run no analytics, no advertising pixels and no third-party trackers. Because we set no non-essential cookies, no cookie consent banner is required; there is simply nothing to consent to.

The site is hosted on Vercel and its database on Neon; both may process data on servers in the United States and the European Union under their standard data-processing terms and contractual safeguards. We share personal information with no one else, except where the law compels us, or with an appointed importer where that is necessary to fulfil your allocation in your market, and then only the minimum required.

Accounts and their request history: for as long as the account exists, and up to five years after the last confirmed allocation for tax and audit purposes. Trade letters and seat requests: up to two years after our last exchange. The Letter: until you unsubscribe. Declined applications: up to one year. We delete sooner on request wherever the law allows.

Under POPIA, and under the GDPR if you are in the EU, you may ask us at any time to: access the personal information we hold about you; correct it; delete it; restrict or object to its processing; receive it in a portable form; and withdraw any consent without affecting past processing. Write to info@platonist.wine and we will respond within a month.

You may also lodge a complaint with the South African Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za) or, in the EU, with your local supervisory authority.

All traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Passwords are hashed with a modern key-derivation function and salted per account. Sessions are server-side and revocable. Access to the database is restricted to the house’s desk. No system is perfect; if a breach ever puts your information at risk, we will notify you and the regulator as POPIA and the GDPR require.

This site is for adults of legal drinking age: 18 or older in South Africa. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone younger; if we learn that we have, we delete it.

If this policy changes materially, we will say so here and, for account holders, by email. The date below always tells you when it was last revised.